Lee, Christine Kim-eng

A challenge that schools face in the new millennium is to create in our classrooms learning communities where pupils are learning, exploring, talking and communicating within a positive classroom culture. Creating such classrooms requires a careful look at how teachers attempt to construct the learning environment. This paper reports on what teachers actually do in their classrooms, with special focus on how they use groupwork in their lessons. It is part of a wider study of classroom organization in Singapore primary schools. Approximately seventy classroom observations of English, Math, Science and Social Studies lessons were gathered. Based on these observations, vignettes of what took place were constructed. The vignettes mirror what the teachers did within the walls of the classroom and reflect their interpretation and personal methods of using groupwork or cooperative learning. The paper will report some of our data on interesting practices that were observed. These reflect how cooperative learning techniques were shaped by teachers, surprising moves and faltering implementation. The teachers used groupwork in different ways and were at different stages of comfort using its techniques. The paper will report on personal adaptations by teachers whose years of experience, beliefs and practical knowledge influenced how they planned and used groupwork. The study is a qualitative one. This paper will consist of the stories of lessons that featured interesting practices. Through this experience, we now have a better understanding of the process of implementation of the groupwork method in our schools.

The urgency of teaching diverse learners is aptly demonstrated in many parts of the world as the ethnic, racial, class, and linguistic diversity grows rapidly. Such diversity not only brings about opportunities for creative teaching, but also challenges for ensuring educational equity and providing high-quality teaching for all students from diverse backgrounds, especially those presently underserved by the educational system (Buehl, & Beck, 2014; Civitillo, Juang, & Schachner, 2018). Researchers have found that teachers prepared for working with students from diverse cultural backgrounds need to embrace beliefs that recognize the strengths of cultural diversity (Anagnostopoulos, 2006; Banks et al., 2005; Fives & Buehl, 2014; Gay, 2010). Thus, exploring and challenging teachers’ beliefs about cultural diversity should constitute a major objective in teacher professional learning. However, only a few studies have examined how in-service teachers’ beliefs are enacted and shaped in professional learning community practices (Little, 2003; Tam, 2015; Turner, 2011), and focused even less on teachers’ beliefs about cultural diversity (Pang, 2005; Sleeter, 1992). There are a few studies examining teachers’ cultural beliefs about diversity in Singapore, and found that Singaporean teachers are influenced by prevailing political ideologies, and have ambiguous perceptions towards students from less advantaged backgrounds (Anderson, 2015; Alviar-Martin & Ho, 2011; Dixon & Liang, 2009; Ho & Alviar-Martin, 2010; Ho et al., 2014; Lim & Tan, 2018). However, these studies discussed teachers’ individual perceptions of disadvantaged learners without further exploring how these perceptions are mediated by influences from professional development practices, where teachers’ cultural beliefs about diversity issues are in (inter)action as ideas emerge, clash, change, and (dis)agree with each other when teachers work together.

Many large-scale studies (Berman and McLaughlin 1975; Emrick and Peterson, 1978) and reviews (Fullan and Pomfret, ,1977) have indicated the need for curriculum developers to pay more attention to the process of implementing new curriculum materials. This study draws upon the tools of the Concerns-based Adoption Model developed by Hall and Loucks to gather information about teacher implementation behaviour in relation to the Curriculum Development Institute of Singapore (CDIS) Social Studies curriculum package. The Innovation Configurations checklist and an openended teacher-concerns questionnaire were ad~qinistered to 725 teachers from 70 primary schools .during two survey periods, March to May 1986 and July to September 1986. Analysis of the data provided understanding of teachers' actual use of the various components of the curriculum and their main concerns. Unacceptable and weak teacher practices were revealed in the fieldtrips, project work, testing and the teaching of concepts components of the curriculum package. In addition, teachers seemed more concerned about the content area of Social Studies rather than the skills which the curriculum package advocated. The data forms a basis for the development of more effective implementation-facilitating activities.

This article explores the use of Structured Academic Controversies (SAC) in the teaching of secondary Social Studies. Social Studies as a subject abounds with many controversial issues ranging from local issues such as Singapore's separation from Malaysia and other issues like conflicts in Sri Lanka and Northern Ireland and the United Nations as a world organisation. An example of a Social Studies lesson which has been trialed in a neighbourhood school will be provided. Implications for the use of SAC in Social Studies classrooms will also be discussed.

Singapore River, even without its slipper-like bumboats and familiar faces of coolies, still evokes feelings of nostalgia among Singaporeans. There is so much history along that little stretch of water. One needs only to stand in front of a colonial building like Parliament House and face the old godowns along Lower North Boat Quay to realise that this river basin has seen much comings and goings. If only Singapore River can talk, the tales it will tell will fire the imagination of our young children. How can a teacher make both the history and geography of the river come alive for our primary schoolchildren? All it takes is a little walk on a fine day around the 'belly of the carp', so named because the river basin bounded by Cavanagh and Elgin bridges is shaped much like a Chinese carp. The Chinese believe that the carp is a symbol of good luck and that businesses operating off the side of the river along the full belly of the carp will thrive and prosper.

A project on lesson study carried out in 2006 and 2007 aimed to find out how it can be used to bring about enhanced teacher learning and instructional improvements. This two-year intensive collaboration between researchers and a local primary school involved planning, teaching and observing research lessons together, as well as studying the processes of school-based curriculum development and teacher learning. The challenges of implementing lesson study in the Singapore context and its evolving local adaptations were carefully documented and analysed. We found that with strong school support, lesson study could bring about continual instructional improvement and a sense of community among the teachers, even though its time-consuming nature may pose numerous challenges for the teachers and schools.